April 19th, 2007

Thursday afternoons I have a two hour class at an oil company down near Gulou. Once again, I won’t bore you with boring work blogging. I was in the toilet and above the urinal, in the space for ads (because you can never miss a chance to advertise) where the public service announcement telling people to park their cars properly (i.e. not in the toilets… Actually, that notice was pretty cool in its own little way) there was now a joke with no obvious value as an advertisement at all. I mean, I couldn’t figure out if it was actually advertising something, and if so, what. Alright, stop waffling: Here is more or less what the joke said:

A man walked into a bar and ordered a drink. Seeing the man was looking rather upset, the waiter (yes, it was a Chinglish joke) asked what was wrong.

“I like men, and so does my brother” said the man.

“Well, don’t worry, there must be somebody in your family who likes women, right?” said the waiter.

“Yes, there is one in my family who likes women: My sister.”

So I suppose I could go into some deep cultural analysis about how this shows the continued strength of Confucian values in a rapidly opening, liberalising society, but I’ll spare you all that bullshit. I just thought it was an interesting thing to see posted on the wall above the urinal in a space usually reserved for advertising.